USA set to invade Iran?

[Jayems]

So the US is calling for more marines, more army members, supposedly for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts... (Beefing up their army numbers)

Now, the UN has agreed to sanctions on Iran for their nuclear developments, but the US is wanting more.

What are your thoughts on the possibility (one that isn't far fetched) of the USA invading Iran.

I personally believe that it would trigger a massive uproar in the middle east and result in a huge conflict involving many more countries (Syria, Egypt, Russia etc).

Anyway, I'm not going to write an essay, just wondering what some peoples thoughts are and what the outcome might be.

I can not believe that the USA would win in the middle east period.

[CaptainCrunch]

I personally don't see the American's invading Iran, the U.S. Military at this point is spread too thin. While a straight out conventional war against Iran would be winnable, its unlikely that you would see that kind of battle as the Fanatical governments in the Middle East have seen the success that the Iraqi insurgency has had against the U.S. Military.

Attacking Syria wouldn't be worth the problems that would grow out of this.

In this case the U.S. has to be savvy to public opinion on both the domestic and international front.

However that prediction all goes to crap if the Iranian's show the capability of deploying theatre nuclear weapons. In that case you would see the American's using air and naval power to go after the Iranian, nuclear manufacturing capabilities.

But an Invasion would never happen.

[FlamesAddiction]

Iran has twice the population as Iraq, a larger military than what Iraq had, a navy and airforce, and has not been shutdown for a decade by sanctions. There is no way the U.S. could invade Iran. The best they could hope to do right now is launch air raids. Likely, they will just let Israel blow up Iran's nuclear sites again.

[metallicat]

I don't want to see a full scaled invasion. I'd much prefer seeing the citizens rise up and overthrow Ahmadinejad. It almost sounds as if there is enough dissension in the country for that to happen at some point in the future.

[jolinar of malkshor]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I don't want to see a full scaled invasion. I'd much prefer seeing the citizens rise up and overthrow Ahmadinejad. It almost sounds as if there is enough dissension in the country for that to happen at some point in the future.

I think given enough time....that is exactly what will happen. Iran has been slowly progressing. Any large scale sanctions will do nothing more than stop that progression and help the extremists in that country.

Having said that.....I don;t want to see Iran with Nuclear weapons either.

[Claeren]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Iran has twice the population as Iraq, a larger military than what Iraq had, a navy and airforce, and has not been shutdown for a decade by sanctions. There is no way the U.S. could invade Iran. The best they could hope to do right now is launch air raids. Likely, they will just let Israel blow up Iran's nuclear sites again.

Exactly. Anyone who thinks Iraq and Iran have much in common beyond being next to each other and having names that start with the letters 'IRA' are needing to a whole lot of research on the subject...

America ultimately would win an all-out war (if you consider what is in Iraq today 'winning') but it would take another trillion+ USD or two and a full out draft neither of which i see America being able to sustain without a whole lot of pain at home. Certainly it does not pass a basic cost-benefit analysis - but then again, neither did Iraq...



Claeren.

[Looger]

iran has fully complied with the IAEA inspections.

the enrichment program some time ago was halted as iran agreed to a framework by which other nations enriched it for their nuclear program.

that support never arrived and iran embarked on its own enrichment program.

this is made to be more than it actually is, by both sides. the fear-mongering maniacs that NEED to expand the war, and the crazed religious nuts in iran that love to defy the US and israel.

interesting column on worldnet daily, a neo-con rag that differs with the party line on issues like border security (they're still under the impression that the war on terror is not a total farce) but pound the drums of war at every opportunity.

osiraq, 1981, still VERY relevant to today:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=25237


At the time, our own government considered the Israeli strike an act of aggression and voted in the United Nations Security Council to condemn it. Your column reminds us that by 1993, the Israeli general who led the strike was able to hang up a framed letter from Dick Cheney, who thanked him for making his job as defense secretary much easier during the Gulf War. I can understand that, George, but all the evidence I can find is that Iraq's nuclear power plant was being used for peaceful purposes in 1981, that it had been a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had recently inspected the plant, which had been constructed by the French, and found nothing amiss.
The former Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations, Nizar Hamdoon, told me in 1999 that only after Israel blew up the billion-dollar Baghdad plant did Saddam order work begun on acquiring nukes to match Israel's. Of course, I checked, and find that to this day the IAEA insists the Iraq weapons program did not begin until 1982. In other words, George, if Israel had not blown up the Osiraq plant, it is conceivable that Saddam would have had no reason to begin a clandestine program when the smoke cleared. The fact that this was clearly an act of aggression by Israel is conveniently forgotten by The New York Times, and perhaps even Vice President Cheney. But it has not been forgotten in the Islamic world, which produced the kinds of "extremists" who would come to look upon the United States as a protector of Israel, anytime it wished to conduct a pre-emptive war or fly American-supplied aircraft over a neighbor' s border to level a nuclear power plant.

according to this guy, iraq's crash weapons program started when they realized the fix they were in.

iran is a country that the west has messed with incessantly. in 1953 they tried to nationalize their own oil interests, hell mossadeq simply wanted 5% oil profits going back to his people.

overthrown. enter savak, stasi-style secret police, and enter the only counter available that couldn't be defeated by the shah's goons - viable islamic fundamentalist opposition. the shah was going to go, and i guess it had to be religious nuts that all that dissident energy was funneled into.

iran had been moving steadily away from extremism, mostly under redormer khatami, until the west invaded two of its immediate neighbours for oil interests and started supporting saddam's favourite terrorists, the MEK - still on washington's terror list by the way - inside their country, blowing crap up as we speak. seymour hirsch broke this story a long time ago.

the common iranians get behind these extremists only because everything they foam at the mouth aboot, seems to be coming true. the US really does look like it'll strike. israel really does look like it'll use nuclear bunker busters to go after a nonexistant nuclear weapons program.

this is completely insane, this is unbelievable, and that's why, folks, this might all happen.

cheney was in saudi arabia two weeks ago trying to plead his case for a sunni-sheite war, while the west and israel sit back and pick at the pieces. still might happen but i doubt it. it may be, at the end of the day, a GIGANTIC conflict - US, israel, uk, and maybe turkey in a passive role against iran, syria, most of iraq, and maybe even countries we don't think aboot like egypt and greece (depending on turkey's involvement and ambition).

there's people right now working on this, like the iran freedom group or whatever it's called in washington, run by lyn cheney. we are looking into the abyss. dare we jump?

[Looger]

another element to all of this is the economic factor, the huge debt that china is buying off the US at $2 billion PER DAY that may be called in once iran's energy deal with china is disrupted, which apparently some chinese officials have explicitly threatened. if there aren't elements within the ruling elite that want an economic collapse, then ask yourselves why would the US mess with iran and china and russia at all.

russia and china formed the shanghai cooperation agreement and invited iran, it is an anti-west pact for the ownership of central asia's VAST petro reserves.

also look for a gulf of tonquin style provocation, as the US has an old and aging USS enterprise as one of the three or four carrier groups there (down to three right now including the infantry carrier but soon back up to four), and any cost-benefit analysis of these situations tends to get old obselete stuff blown to bits.

the one failure of the gulf war if anyone recalls was the inability of the massive airstrikes to stop the launch of SCUDs, they're truck-mounted and hid behind rocks, hedgehog defensive formations, etc. until showtime. well iran has huge numbers of truck-mounted SS-N-22 sunburn surface-to-surface missiles, which when tested in 1998 by the USN were found to be too fast for aegis to hit and too fast for the phalanx system to do anything worthwhile. the phalanx actually filled its target with holes but the mach 4.5 death-dive of the missile was too much, it stayed together enough to still destroy the drone hull.

is the US CENTCOM contemplating starting a conflict while thousands of its sailors / marines are in the crosshairs of these things? do they need a massive killoff of their own servicemen to justify nuking iran and maybe making their big push to seize their birthright?

the fact that so many of the west's ruling elite has snuck SO MUCH military technology and manufacturing savvy to the chinese over the years leads me to believe that at some level china's playing along. will they be the engine by which the next economic crisis plagues this world when they want their trillion back and iran mines the oil tanker route and oil shoots to $250 per barrel?

the US has minesweepers in their huge naval buildup off of iran by the way...

[Claeren]

^ I agree with a lot of that, but some of it is a little too paranoid for my liking. I think it gives America way too much credit - at the top they are not competent, aligned, and organized enough to make such logical decisions!! lol....

America has wasted far too much energy on Iraq - they do not have enough left to attack anyone else (let alone Iran) without inflicting a heavy price at home and i think they know it.

IMO, the only thing that causes this scale of war is if America starts to fall apart economically before it happens, but i don't think that inversely this war will be what causes it fall apart in the first place.



Claeren.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Looger

iran has fully complied with the IAEA inspections.

You sure about that?


From an article yesterday...

The resolution also says the council will review Iran's actions in light of a report from the head of the IAEA, requested within 60 days, on whether Iran has suspended uranium enrichment and complied with other IAEA demands.

It says sanctions will end as soon as the board of IAEA — the U.N's nuclear watchdog — confirms that Iran has complied with all its obligations.
An IAEA statement Saturday expressed agency chief Mohamed Elbaradei's hope in the long-term for "cooperation with Iran based on mutual respect and the establishment of international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear" program.

I suspect if Iran had complied with everything, we wouldn't have the UN imposing sanctions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061223/...n_iran_nuclear

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I don't want to see a full scaled invasion. I'd much prefer seeing the citizens rise up and overthrow Ahmadinejad. It almost sounds as if there is enough dissension in the country for that to happen at some point in the future.

When you say 'overthrow', do you mean 'exercise their right to vote him out at the next general election'? Or do you expect him to be impeached? Really, Ahmadinejad is neither here nor there; he's a democratically elected official, and while people may protest against them, the likelyhood of them actually having a rebellion to forcibly remove him from power is about as likely as the same happening to Bush. The earliest he'll be removed from power is at the general election in 2009.
And even if that were to happen, any Iranian revolution that falls short of a complete restructuring of the upper levels of power (supreme leader and council of guardians) is really inconsequential; and I haven't gotten the impression that there is anywhere close to the level of public support for that scale of revolution. That's the nice thing about the Iranian style of government: they can placate the people with the illusion of effective democracy, while maintaining a powerful and stable theocracy.

[Azure]

Overthrow...as in vote him out.

I think you have pointed out in recent threads Octothorp that top people in Iran do not want Nuclear weapons.

If Ahmadinejad pushes for them, don't you think there is a good chance he will be voted out come next election?

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Azure

Overthrow...as in vote him out.

I think you have pointed out in recent threads Octothorp that top people in Iran do not want Nuclear weapons.

If Ahmadinejad pushes for them, don't you think there is a good chance he will be voted out come next election?

That's a good question. There are people in Iran who definitely do want nuclear weapons, and those who don't (some of whom feel that they are nonetheless being forced into a nuclear weapons program by western powers); generally I'm quick to call out those who try to paint the entire population of Iran as being one viewpoint or the other, but as far as where the majority lie, I won't pretend that I have any real clue about that. So much of it will probably depend on who runs against him; it's really largely about charisma as opposed to policy, and from the sounds of it Ahmadinejad really striked a chord with a lot of voters last time. Hopefully someone will emerge who can challenge his populist appeal, strike a more concilatory tone with the west, and still be nationalistic enough to meet the supreme council's candidacy requirements.

[Coelah]

I don't see an invasion happening. Airstrikes maybe. But they'd be done under the authority of NATO or the UN.

The Americans could win a conventional war easily against Iran. They may not be the pushovers Iraq was, but the American army is the most technologically advanced in the world. Their navy and air force are unmatched. It would be a quick victory.

The problem is that the objective of an invasion, to get regime change and promote liberalism in the Middle East, wouldn't occur. It would be the same as Iraq where they'd be bogged down as a foreign occupier trying to eliminate an insurgency. Ther would be violence and extremists would have even more influence.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by transplant99

You sure about that?

yep.

from your own article:

Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif denounced the council for imposing sanctions on Iran, whose facilities are under U.N. safeguards, while doing nothing about Israel, whose prime minister recently appeared to confirm long suspicions that it is a nuclear power.

also, never hurts to go the horse's mouth:

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus...an/index.shtml

the past problems with iran, and how they've changed their tune, despite the rhetoric from their firebrand idiot figureheads and the neo-con 'glass parking lot' - chanting warmongers:

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Trans...l21022005.html

SPIEGEL: The Bush administration seems more concerned about Tehran´s nuclear program than that of North Korea. The Iranian government claims it is only interested in nuclear energy for civilian uses. However, former CIA director James Woolsey says that there is "not a shadow of a doubt" that Iran´s leadership is trying to build its own nuclear weapons. Who is correct?
ELBARADEI: We at the IAEA lack conclusive evidence. We have yet to see a smoking gun that would convict Tehran. I can make assumptions about intentions, but I cannot verify intentions, just facts.
SPIEGEL: But Iran repeatedly lied to and deceived your agency. For example, the world only found out about the nuclear enrichment facility in Natans through information provided by Iranian dissidents. Hardliners in the Bush administration have accused you of being inexplicably soft on the Iranians.
ELBARADEI: It´s not a matter of dispute as to whether Iran lied and deceived in the past. We made that very clear in our reports. In the meantime, however, Iran has improved its cooperation, which, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is obligated to provide. In response to our pressure, Tehran also signed the supplementary protocol last year, which allows us to perform more comprehensive inspections on short notice. I am certainly proud of what we have accomplished in Iran. Eighteen months ago, the country was more of a black hole for us...
SPIEGEL: ...which goes to show how completely the IAEA inspections had failed...
ELBARADEI: ...but now we have a rather clear picture of what is happening there.
SPIEGEL: Really? Or has the game of hide-and-seek just taken on a new, more refined form? Hardly any European expert is willing to believe the claims coming out of Tehran. After all, Iran has enough oil and especially natural gas that it could do without nuclear power.
ELBARADEI: There is a technical justification for everything. And I´m not saying that the rulers in Iran are not interested in acquiring nuclear weapons. If they have decided to operate a secret nuclear weapons program - for which we, as I mentioned, have not found any evidence to date -- they are likely to have a bomb in two to three years. They certainly have the know-how and the industrial infrastructure.
SPIEGEL: The Americans and the Israelis will hardly permit that to happen. That leaves only the military option, which US President Bush has expressly declined to rule out. But is it really possible to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities with missiles? Aren´t they too widely dispersed and in some cases underground?
ELBARADEI: Aside from the problems you mention, I do not believe that military strikes can solve this problem. They can delay development at best. Following an attack, the Iranians would most certainly go underground to produce a weapon as quickly and deliberately as possible.

no, iran is no angel. they have lied in the past, and the IAEA is subsequently quite suspicious of their intentions. but guess what, they inspect the hell out of iran's facilities.

the only way to guarantee iran has a nuclear program, is to strike their nuclear facilities.

it's important to realize how ridiculous this situation is, i mean israel isn't even a member of the NPT and plenty of their top leadership is not in any way interested in peace with anyone.

Originally Posted by transplant99

I suspect if Iran had complied with everything, we wouldn't have the UN imposing sanctions.

yeah, cause the security council is totally altruistic...

when israel gives even basic lip service to the 34+ violations of UN resolutions it currently violates, come talk to me aboot iran, a country that has by and large played ball.

someone accusing you of something does not mean you're automatically guilty.

when israel signs the NPT and submits to inspections, then there is a case for debate here.

oh, that's right, i forgot! god's chosen people are above international law, and can do no wrong. silly me.

as to the invasion, the intention of the neocons has more to do with cheney's infamous energy task force map, showing the locations of the major major reserves in the mideast, with sunni-controlled reorganized states sitting on top of all the prime finds. coincidentally the western chunk they want of iran - a sunnistan or some nonsense - has the vast majority of iran's oil.

listening to kristol or perle drone on and on, they say that they think that they can cause enough political instability in iran to break off this chunk. anyone with half a brain knows that these measures to destabilize, are actually emboldening the sicko faction of iran's leadership. they know this, but the vast majority of their idiot followers that are 'in on the program' remain hooked on the kool-aid.

i recommend to all neo-con lovers to investigate the founder of their movement, leo strauss, and what he says aboot lying to the public and keeping a constant state of warfare and unaccountability because the leadership should be completely unwilling to answer to the people. interesting stuff.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by Claeren

^ I agree with a lot of that, but some of it is a little too paranoid for my liking. I think it gives America way too much credit - at the top they are not competent, aligned, and organized enough to make such logical decisions!! lol....

cheney's energy task force. important decisions like this wouldn't be left in the hands of elected officials.

Originally Posted by Claeren

America has wasted far too much energy on Iraq - they do not have enough left to attack anyone else (let alone Iran) without inflicting a heavy price at home and i think they know it.

the conflict would be night and day. iraq is intended to be a staging area, a huge base (ironically the rough translation of al-quaeda... though i hear it's a crude reference to an arabic toilet humour joke), a permanent stirred-up civil war that serves as an excuse for the MASSIVE bases being built partly by - you guessed it - bin laden brothers construction company.

the iranian conflict would be mostly with proxy armies that the neo-cons insist they can create in iran, as well as currently friendly terrorists like the MEK and the PKK remnants.

think airstrikes, think deep insertions by special forces, don't think total occupation of the entire country.

Originally Posted by Claeren

IMO, the only thing that causes this scale of war is if America starts to fall apart economically before it happens, but i don't think that inversely this war will be what causes it fall apart in the first place.



Claeren.

the collapse many believe is written. it's coming. what sets off the straw on the camel's back, is anyone's guess.

will the collapse be because of the war, or will the war be because of the collapse? does it really matter?

[Displaced Flames fan]

Not going to happen.

Nope.

No chance.

[Looger]

i sure hope not:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=53378

Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

i do not agree with corsi on many issues but the dude does his homework and is an expert on many subjects, like the north american union, the border / illegal immigration issue, and the machinations of the extremists in iran.

when insiders like pastor get this bold i get worried:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/7912/...community.html

ROBERT A. PASTOR is the Director of the Center for North American Studies, Vice President of International Affairs and Professor at AmericanUniversity . From 1977 to 1981 he was Director of Latin American Affairs on the National Security Council. He has a Ph.D. in government from HarvardUniversityand is the author or editor of 16 books, including Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old Worldfor the New.

[KTown]

Better not happen, I have to go back there in the New Year to work for a couple of weeks.

[Hack&Lube]

No, the U.S. is not going to invade Iran.